Employee engagement surveys, sometimes called employee satisfaction surveys or employee feedback surveys, can be a great tool for leaders to understand employee viewpoints on a variety of organizational aspects. Before an organization launches an employee engagement survey it is important to understand the pros, cons, and things to keep in mind when seeking to determine a level of engagement by asking for your employee’s opinion.

Have you ever given feedback to someone and questioned why you needed to re-state what you thought should have been obvious in the first place? The reality is our employees are all individuals working as part of our larger team. What may seem obvious to us is not always clear to others.

Did you know there are five generations in today's modern workforce? Now, if we could just get everyone to all work together! Let's take a quick review of each generation and their traits before we delve into the common problems we see our clients face...

Often we hear much about the best practices in Human Resources Management (HRM). So much so that there is frequently confusion about what that exactly means and what the universal practices really are. While a segment of these best practices can be applied comprehensively in most organizations, what might be considered an HRM best practice in one corporate culture, industry, or organization might not be transportable as a best practice in another.

Finding the right leader for your organization can mean double digit profits or shutting your doors forever. While this is certainly an extreme example of what can happen, we all look for exceptional leaders that can lead our organizations to new and exceptional heights. During my time as a Business Partner for Helios HR, I have had the pleasure of working with both exceptional and mediocre leaders. Some of these exceptional leaders have embodied the following characteristics as described in Kouzes and Posner’s famous work “The Leadership Challenge”:

I have handled many employee relations issues in my time as an HR professional and over the years have said to myself on countless occasions, “gosh, if only the manager had managed the employee, we wouldn't be having these performance discussions right now.” I think, too often, great employees are promoted into manager positions because that seems like the next logical step in that individual’s career path.